


Renaissance

by Its_real_for_us



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A lot of Wolfstar too, Angst, Bisexual Regulus Black, Confessions, Death, Falling In Love, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, James Potter Lives, M/M, Marauders, Memory Charm | Obliviate (Harry Potter), Smut, Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:34:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27897643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Its_real_for_us/pseuds/Its_real_for_us
Summary: On October 31st, 1981 in Godric's Hollow, Lily and Harry are killed at the hands of Lord Voldemort while James Potter is out for a stroll at the neighbourhood graveyard to visit the tombs of his deceased parents who died of Dragon Pox the year prior.In his return to Potter Cottage, James is in ruins. Sirius and Remus, a couple at the time, show up at James’ home after receiving word from Dumbledore of strange activity. Unconsolable and a ghost of who the Marauders knew James to be, they obliviate his mind, making him not only forget Lily and Harry but the Wizarding World and his life as a whole.Sirius and Remus, aware James needs some sort of memories, implant fake ones of a Muggle life in the England countryside. However, since they're fictional recollections and not true memories, James lacks the depth of childhood and its many beauties.
Relationships: Regulus Black/James Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 19
Kudos: 59





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: Paris, Scotland, and England between roughly  
> ~November 1st, 1981 to mid-July of 1996.

It was Halloween night, the 31st of October 1981 in Godric’s Hollow, and James couldn’t find it in himself to move at all. He laid on the cool ground, tears streaming down his pale, sunken-cheek visage.

There were no words.

And he feared there would never be for such a horrific atrocity come true. James heard their voices from a distance, the panicked cries of his friends, but he didn’t dare speak. He didn’t dare move. He couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. There was no point, not just in movement, but in anything of any kind.

There would be no willing his heart back into the rhythm of soft, unbroken beats; no pursuit of a happy life after the potential of this one had been ripped away from him in a flash of brilliant green, unimaginable light.

The Potter Cottage was a home of the past. It was no more, and it wasn’t solely because of Voldemort. James had already buggered everything up long before then. He’d left Lily a few weeks prior in a fit of rage, and now, she was dead. _It’s my fault. It’s my fault. If only I would’ve been here. I could’ve-_

They’d promised, Lily and James, that they’d raise Harry together. That had always been the plan, and that’s exactly what they did. Following their split, James hadn’t even bothered leaving their shared home, stating young Harry needed the presence of his mother and father on the daily.

But to be fair, James had no intentions of leaving Lily for good. He’d been a fool to let anything drive a stake between them and their dreams. _What’s wrong with me? Why would I have left her? It’s all my fault._

James cried into his carmine-drenched palms. His heart was heavier than it had ever been. There was no coming back from this. There would never be any coming from back from this. _Why couldn’t it have been me? Why?_

Her blood, Lily’s blood, covered him. He hadn’t even managed to make it to Harry. James couldn’t see his little boy like that; lifeless and exuding the life he still had left out. Vermillion red liquid seeped through his white chemise, staining it with the last remnants of her existence; her red blood cells no longer delivering oxygen to her lungs and the rest of her organs and tissues.

_It should’ve been me. It should’ve._

James screamed in his hands, the rusty flavour of blood making its way into his mouth and searing warmly on his tongue. _I was supposed to protect them. I was a father. I was a dad. How can this be?_ James just wanted his mind to shut off, even if that meant he’d go mad himself. _Please. Please._

Anything would be better than this.

He heard their voices in the background again; the one of his soul-brother Sirius and his best mate, Remus. He heard them shuffle from the front entrance, with the door he assumed would still be wide open as they made their way through the kitchen and down the corridor to Harry’s room.

_If only, I’d been here. Maybe things would be different. Maybe I could’ve saved them and been the one to die at the hands of Voldemort instead. It would’ve been better, so much better._

James would never be able to forgive himself for this. All he’d wanted was a simple breather to forget. It was hard to live in a house with the woman he was married to but no longer with. He loved her, and she was in the other room gone in the blink of an unforgivable curse. _No, please!_

He’d just needed fresh air. That was all it was, nothing more than a husband who needed a break. So he’d left, only an hour, to the neighbourhood graveyard not so far away from where his parents were buried. They’d both died last winter of a Dragon Pox epidemic.

It had been raining heavily, possibly foreshadowing the bereavement to come.

“James,” a voice from the distance called frantically, the wizard holding it clearly tormented. “James!” James would recognise that voice anywhere. It was Sirius. _He thinks I'm dead as well._

But even despite the wizard he loved like a brother thinking he, too, was dead, James couldn’t utter a single word. All he could do was cry and cry and wish to turn back time to a few hours prior. _The things I’d do differently if I could. Everything,_

_I’d do you everything differently._

James would hold Lily in one arm, Harry in the next, and forgive her for everything that had happened between them, no matter the severity. Nothing would stop him from making them the perfect, happy little family if James only had another chance.

“James,” Sirius cried loud as he finally saw a breathing James Potter sprawled out in the hallway of his home. Remus followed in Sirius’ footsteps, just as broken as he was. Lily had been his best friend since second year.

Sirius collapsed to his knees, looking into James tear-filled eyes. Remus followed, bowing his head in absolute defeat. _I was finally a father._

“James,” Sirius cried, again and again, leaning forward to hold the wizard in his arms, but James still didn’t move. He stared ahead; a ghost of who the Marauders knew. “What do we do?” Sirius sobbed, his onyx curls swaying as he turned to his lover.

Tears poured down Remus’ chin.

At that moment, nothing mattered anymore. It didn’t matter that the couple had been arguing for months on end about Remus’ association with the werewolves, or that their untimely deaths were even more probable than ever. Lily and Harry were dead. James might as well be, in this state.

“Take it away,” James bit out through shocked sobs. “Please,” he begged, digging his nails into his temples.

“James,” Remus wailed, “I am so sorry!”

“Her blood, it’s on me!” James was without console. “And Harry, he’s- Take it off,” he yelled into thin air, scratching to his nail beds. “Take it away. I don’t care, Padfoot! Make me forget.”

“I- I can’t,” Sirius spoke, barely able to keep eye contact with James when he did. “I can’t.”

Remus howled, “Sirius.”

“No,” Sirius shrieked, “not him too!”

“Sirius, I love you,” Remus said. He hadn’t said it to him in months. Sirius wouldn’t allow him to. “And we love James; we love him so very much.”

Sirius looked at Remus, and then, back at James again. James’ eyes still stared into nothingness. The wizard they loved wasn’t there. He was gone far, far away from here, whether that be just from Godric’s Hollow, or the world as they knew it. James was no longer.

Sirius nodded, “we love him too.”

Remus’ amber orbs found James’ blue hold, “you are and forever will be my best friend, James Potter.”

Sirius couldn’t even look at James. He was drowning alive in his own body. _I was a father. I was a dad. It should’ve been me. It has to be me, please._

“Now, Remus, now!”

Remus grabbed his wand and mustered up all the energy he didn’t have to give. He had to do this right, and though he didn’t know James still heard everything they were saying, it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.

James wouldn’t have stopped them. If anything, he would have willed them into it. _No more Potter Cottage, no more family, no more Marauders, no more Wizarding World. Please._

“Obliviate.”


	2. Les mardis bleus

It began softly, almost as if a faint whistling in the air that was barely noticeable to most, and then suddenly, it was raining outside. The clouds hung in the post meridiem sky as they danced across a tar-coloured canvas. It was a typical Parisian night, one that the man had seen many times before.

James closed the cash register, a lot on his mind. He thought about tomorrow’s forecast and who would be coming into work the next morning, he thought of what he was going to have for supper once home, and what classic he’d borrow next at the library once he was done with the latest Oscar Wilde he’d been reading for the last couple of weeks.

He’d only just got a library card.

It was a lot to think of for a simple man, but he was content. James cleared out the tip jar and added some francs to different envelopes, splitting the profit between him and his three employees equally. For a long time, he’d wanted the café’s load to be bared by him and his closest friend of many years named Jacques only, but with time, it had been proven just too difficult for the two men to keep up by themselves.

In the end, it was better to have more than two people at the café. James had gotten far too invested in his work. It had become him, and at some point, the line between James and James’ job had become so blurred he couldn’t even set time for himself aside without feeling guilty.

Not too many months later, Jacques had gone off to Oxford, as many smart lads did, and sooner or later, the man barely came back to Paris at all. At first, James had taken it personally, but he realised most people had bigger dreams than he did. And that was okay. He wasn’t a man of many words, of much passion even.

James wasn’t made for some intricate, fascinating life. It wasn’t in his make-up to be a misfit, even if he wondered exactly what that would entail at times, and how divergent his path may be had he been some other man; one with dreams that spanned further than just opening his own shop in France’s heart.

James enjoyed the sound of rain kissing the cobbled streets, and the soft chitter-chatter of francophones sat at a table in his café. He’d changed the place’s name after buying it from the previous owner years back.

‘Les mardis bleus’ had been his final choice, meaning ‘Tuesday Blues’ in English. He liked the way it sounded, even if he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d chosen such a name.

It had been a regular Tuesday. Jacques’ favourite vinyl hummed from beside the French press, and the quiet pitter-patter of water against stone resonated in James’ ears. It was just a normal day, and the sky was blue, and the music was painfully sad.

James hadn’t questioned himself further than that. It just fit, and so, he and Jacques laughed over cabernet that shouldn’t have been allowed that time of day as they listened to the passerby’s talk and the city come alive.

And so, the name was born.

James smiled, thinking back on those memories brought him a kind of solace he wasn’t even sure how to explain. He missed Jacques and the feeling of laughing until his sides hurt, watching as the man’s joy cavorted his face into a mesh of broken smiles. James wanted that again. It felt so nostalgic to him, even if he couldn’t quite place why that was exactly.

He’d been able to make acquaintances with two of the new workers, but it wasn’t the same. And James wasn’t the type to try to force things when they didn’t seem to go together. _Everyone has their own strange puzzle pieces. We aren’t all meant to match._

James studied his environs, taking the keys from his trousers' pocket as he shut, one by one, all the lights to the café. Timothée would be coming in for the 6 to 10 a.m. shift. If James tried and went to bed early, he would finally be able to get a good night of sleep for the first time in a long time. He needed the rest. James was drained from weeks on end with no moment’s break.

He walked outside, closing the door to les mardi bleus, and locked it. It was still raining, and James flat was still a few blocks north. He sighed, he was without a sliver of a doubt, going to get wet. To be fair, the man would be lucky enough if he didn’t get soaked.

James didn’t care, though. The weather was what it was. There was no changing mother nature. _I might as well embrace it._ He tried to recall if he’d fed his cat named after the brightest star in the night sky; Sirius. He wasn’t sure if he had or not. _I hope I didn’t forget, if not I’ll be coming home to one grumpy fuck!_

The rain came down on James’ raven russet curls, water droplets falling into his eyes. _Rain._ James went dizzy, his knees weakening below him. A graveyard flashed before his eyes; a nightmare he’d had one too many times.

“Woah,” James uttered apprehensively, halting in the middle of the sidewalk as water continued to pour overhead. Pedestrians leered, but James couldn’t find it in himself to be offended by them. He was shocked. 

_What the hell was that? Why had the graveyard felt so-_

James couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was entirely off. He’d never been good with memories. It wasn’t until Jacques spoke of his youth on and on had James recognised he’d barely recalled any of his, but this was way more than the simple act of forgetting.

An uneasy feeling churned in James’ stomach.

Jacques had spoken of childhood trauma and the effects it could sometimes have on the human brain, especially at such a young age. He would know, Jacques was studying psychology, after all. However, James couldn’t remember any trauma from his youth.

 _There couldn’t be. I’d remember it, wouldn’t I?_ James tried recalling his years as a little boy, but he only came up with more blanks; holes in his memories he couldn’t seem to fill. _Just like I remember my childhood, right?_ He sneered, hating that his brain forever failed him. _No, it must have been the caffeine. I knew drinking coffee past 10 o’clock was daft._

James exhaled, unable to find his breath quick enough, he surged forward, tumbling over his own feet. _As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough already!_ He dissociated from his surroundings, not paying notice to anyone.

 _I’ve got to make it home. Sirius must miss me. I miss him._ James found his bearings and strode ahead, turning on his flat’s street, St-Olivier. The rain had mostly ceased, and the streetlights shone down on the puddles that had formed during its rage.

Part of James, a part he wasn’t even conscious existed, wanted to jump into its grimy contents; splashing and dancing about. _Is that what youth was, the unmitigated art of not caring, of playing because why do anything else? Is that where adventure and wanderlust roared, in the cave of ever-youth?_

James assumed that was why he had an easygoing lifestyle. If youth was the bearer of thrill, it made sense he’d never developed the urge for more than just peace and tranquillity. For all James knew, he’d been an adult forever. It, at the very least, felt that way.

The dawn of his life had dusked.

The man couldn’t understand why he missed something he’d never even had or, at least, recalled. _How is it possible to be in a constant state of nostalgia for something I’ve never even had?_

The streetlight above James flickered. He looked up, almost as if an innate habit stored within the depths of his being, one that couldn’t be erased. The incandescent bulb glimmered again, wavering off and on.

James twisted and turned, looking around at his surroundings. Not only was there nobody beside him, there was nobody on his street at all. _Strange. Weren't there a few people before? And why did I expect someone to be beside me?_ James furrowed his eyebrows, and then, felt a familiar presence behind him.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

 _It can’t be. That’s impossible._ James was completely frozen. _Turn around you git, you can’t really know until you’ve actually looked_ , but somehow, James was already sure of who it was. He turned, his gangly limbs shaking.

“Jacques?” James spoke.


	3. Paris, je t'aime

James sat aboard an old train, not knowing where the next bend would carry him as he listened to the clickety-clack of the iron tracks below him. His heart thrummed in his chest that rose and fell in tandem with his ravenous, unrelenting heartbeat. He’d never felt it pound so hard before.

It was almost deafening. It rang in his ears like a never-ending crescendo of drums, the valves of his heart acting more like Icuras’ unabated wings as he flew too close to the sun. James hoped his story wouldn’t end the same, though. He wasn’t ready to free fall quite yet. There was still more he wanted to do with his transient life.

The first on his list, to see Paris in all its glory.

Without much thought, James grasped tightly onto his leather taupe-coloured suitcase, refusing to let it go for even a second. He held the case to his sternum like he would a scared child, still trying to steady his heart’s continuous whirr with little to no success. He couldn’t understand why he had so much tension in his chest when he thought of a child, or when he thought of the possibility of a new life, as a general.

“I deserve to be happy,” James had murmured to himself.

James sighed, saddened he couldn’t bring the fervent waves of worry that ebb and flowed inside of him at bay, the one that bordered the shore to a wild sea of chaos and doubts. He knew it was stupid, but his suitcase bared all his belongings, and even though there were only very few, they were all he had. They were the only items he’d brought with him on his new journey: a few blouses, some socks, and a pair of trousers or two.

A trolley wheeled by him as a tall, blonde lady pushed the cart in the aisle beside where James was seated. Laboriously, she strolled down the passageway, offering tea, herbal or caffeinated, and biscuits galore to any passenger interested. The smell of Earl Grey and oolong imbued the air, meshed with ginger snaps and other biscuits James had never heard of.

James took nothing from the trolley.

Instead, he looked out the window as the old train rocked slowly back and forth like a wicker bassinet, cradling him into its careful hold. A beautiful cityscape slowly emerged in front of James’ eyes and onto the horizon, a rogue page of what must have been yesterday’s newspaper fluttering in the wispy autumnal air.

The city was not at all what James had imagined, nothing like England or Scotland, but it was so beautiful, nevertheless. It had taken his breath away in a single glare. _Oh, Paris._ He was more than happy to be there.

James’ drop off point approached, and yet, the man still couldn’t comprehend what had brought him on this train to Paris; the City of Love, or should he name it La Ville-Lumière, the City of Lights, like some called it.

James knew Paris received that the title because it was one of the first cities to ever have electricity. He tried to envision it now; the markets once bathed in twilight, no lights to illuminate places after dark. How strange it was to picture such times.

To be fair, James could hardly remember where he’d just come from himself, let alone why he was on this train headed to Paris, at all. It almost felt like a choice he’d never truly made. _Was I at my parents’ house? Was I there before here? In a town called something Hollow? That can’t be it, can it?_

The memories were all so foggy.

The old train came to a sudden halt, making raucous, metallic noises as it did. James got up and got off the train, weak in the knees as Paris welcomed him into its fictitious, open arms. _I’ll like it here_ , he’d thought, happy he’d made the decision to leave home even if he wasn’t too certain why he’d chosen to do so in the first place.

In a matter of minutes, James had taken it all in: the smell of nearby pastry shops with long queues that the French seemed to love more than life, the narrow cobbled streets, the sound of a new language so beautiful he couldn’t help the envy that steadily crawled up his vocal cords, flurries and flurries of bicycles, and restaurants with outside seating arrangements everywhere he looked.

It was lust of the eyes; the greatest city James had ever seen. It was paradise, or dreamland, or maybe something that couldn’t be held by the confines of language, whatever its tongue may be. It transcended explanation, and James wondered if that was why so many artists, from painters to poets to writers, tried to capture the inexpressible air it had.

James had stood, at the time, in the middle of a crowd of bustling people, appreciating Paris’ beauty for longer than he’d cared to admit. He had nothing, merely a suitcase and a few francs to his name. He was nobody, not here in the immensity of Grand Paris’ metropolis, but he had not minded. _I’m here. I’ve made it._

It felt good to be a man in the most renown city in the world. The city of la tour Eiffel, le musée du Louvre, la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, le Moulin-Rouge, les pâtisseries, et la mode; a fashion capital.

And if that meant struggling to make it here, in Paris, then James knew he’d be even more grateful when he finally did. He would conquer this place; make his own somehow. It didn’t matter to James what it would take. He was willing to give himself over to the game, warranted or unwarranted. He was ready to be one with the city that never seemed to sleep.

James would wait tables and pick up garbage if he had to.

However, nothing would stop him from dreaming of his great plan of action. It was barmy, but more than anything, James wanted to open a café where city folk and tourists alike could resign for a moment’s time before or after their days; a hidden enclave of a place they could count on. 

That was all James could ask for.

He desired a single one of their moments. He wanted to be a beside photograph in the background of a multi-hour, vintage film. And if James was lucky, and he hoped he would be, he’d maybe even have a reoccurring customer or two he’d get to know more than just that.

 _I think everyone wishes to be seen and heard and loved for longer than a single elapse in a long, long life._ At the time, he’d smiled at the idea of both foreign and familiar faces lighting up his imagined coffee shop. Despite how mad it sounded, James could almost already visualise that little enclave in time.

 _What would I name such a place? Who would there be? How would the word get around?_ Questions after questions appeared in James’ mind, one after the next. _Where’s the funds to even allow me to dream?_

James, having just left the years of an adolescence he couldn’t recall behind him, had made the first step of many in the right direction, and he could feel it in every cell of his body. This was simply the very beginning of something much larger.

He knew it. He felt it in his very bones.

Today, the young man would find a hostel and explore the big city. He’d go to le marché Mouffetard, see the great monuments, and stroll the lands: the cobbled streets, the bridges, the gardens painted by deft fingers.

Tomorrow, James would begin searching for any job he could find and a potential flat that wasn’t too expensive, even if he assumed that most places in Paris would be far from cheap. He couldn’t live in a hostel forever, and if James really wanted to open a café one day, he’d definitely need the money.

He’d even try to make a few friends, maybe even buy a familiar once he was settled in properly. All the options were on the table. This was his life, and he was going to make the most of it.

James needed to.


	4. La courte histoire de Jacques Rullière

It was January 1st, 1982. A new year was amongst Paris, the city in which James had been for exactly two months now to this very day, and he’d already found himself a little place on St-Olivier street. It wasn’t big. It was purely a tiny bedroom, a makeshift sitting room, and a small kitchenette of a place to make food if one even dared to.

But James was happy.

He didn’t care about the size. Yeah, it was dingy and drab, rundown and unkempt, but James was grateful for what he had. He found no reason to dwell about the semantics of it all.

After only a few days in Paris, he’d found a job at a local market, not _le marché Mouffetard_ like he’d originally hoped he’d acquire, but it would do. There were only so many places that were willing to hire an Anglo-Saxon of a man in a country landed a language derived from the Latin roots of the ancient Roman Empire.

James’ English wouldn’t serve him far here, but that was quite okay with him. Within weeks, he’d already fallen accustomed to the barter of his work, especially since this trade, apart from most bartering, actually included monetary gain.

It was very much give and take. James would spend his days unloading the tiny trucks full of goods in the back alley, preparing quinoa salad and other specific-to-his-store recipes for incoming clients, making sure there was enough of everything on the shelves, and in return, he’d get to live. He’d get to eat. He’d get to hold onto his crazy café dream.

It was a sort of dance, a tango if you would, that he’d learned well. Too well, possibly, James sometimes thought; a settling for a simpler life than the one he truly desired.

And on this day, January 1st, 1982, the first of a brand new year in a city that James had already started to make his own, many years ago from the current day, James watched as a peculiar man entered the store. He’d never seen him before, and they weren’t in a side of Pairs were tourists lingered and loitered about.

He watched him carefully as he made his way through the fruit and vegetable section, taking a crocheted bag to place sweet cherries and honeydew melon in. _How very French, the tourists always take the plastic bags._ James couldn’t really see him from afar, but he still observed, his eyes never leaving the man’s slender silhouette.

James liked observing people and places; keeping a mental catalogue of everyone he’d met and everywhere he’d been. It was nothing new. He’d done it ever since he’d first moved to Paris in November, hoping it would give him insight on how to better converse with others and maybe, just maybe, it would also teach him how to keep memories dear.

He didn’t want to forget more than he already had. James had years of weird recollections that felt more like said stories than actual events. They had no depths; solely shallow waters in what was everyone else’s gaping oceans. He’d supposedly grown up in the England countryside, yet James couldn’t seem to remember any of it.

People spoke of their memories in such vivid ways, almost as if all their senses recalled bits and bobs, smells and tastes, colours and feelings, touches and essence. James had wondered how that was even possible.

Nevertheless, something about the way the man in front him moved was estranged. James wondered if it was his gait, or maybe, the cadence of his walk. He wasn’t too sure. Maybe it was nothing, and James’ mind had simply found a way of making his daily tasks more intriguing out of utter boredom.

So, instead of creeping, James had focused his attention back to what he’d been doing, not even aware the man was closer to him than he’d been the whole time prior. Almost meticulously, James placed more Ambrosia apples onto the display, carefully making sure none of them had gone rotten since he’d checked the night before.

James had measured his breaths, enumerating them one by one, as he’d looked up. The man was gone. He’d just been and now he wasn’t. James homed in on the cherries the man had been picking and tossing into his bag only moments ago. Beside, perched on a small extent of table usually covered in a variety of diverse cheeses, laid a black trench coat.

_It has to be his._

James ran up to it and grabbed the coat in his firm grip. The material was made of thick poplin and smelled of evergreen, peppermints, and cologne. His mind rushed as he peered down at the trench coat, a prestigious insignia James couldn’t quite decipher was embedded on the tag. Three letters were imprinted in cursive.

Absentmindedly, James ran out of the market, searching for the peculiar man. His eyes scanned the city streets and the strollers who walked amongst its paved pathways. He searched until he saw the back of man’s head.

“R.A.B,” James called out. The man turned instantly, tendrils and tendrils of ebony hair falling in his ashen visage. He was wearing a button-down white chemise, and there was skin everywhere, just everywhere; scrolls and scrolls of it- down his neck, his chest, his collarbones, his wrists.

_How isn’t he cold? It’s winter._

James thought it odd the man had forgotten his coat when Paris, in its entirety, was covered in blankets and blankets of white, at the moment, but he didn’t speak. James was too enthralled in waiting for the man’s response to ponder on it any more than he had already.

“It’s Jacques, actually,” the man said, “a namesake from my grandfather.” His voice was deep, and his English was coated in a rich French accent that James assumed many female tourists would die for if given the opportunity.

“Jacques,” James corrected awkwardly, gingerly handing him his trench coat. _Why’d he react to R.A.B instantly, then?_

“Thank you,” Jacques voiced, a dazzling smile playing at his lips. James smiled back, and just before he turned to leave to the market, Jacques spoke again. “Coffee, beer," he uttered blatantly, almost as if a question.

James furrowed his eyebrows.

“I mean, may I take you for a coffee or a glass?” James fell silent. “To thank you further for retrieving my coat that is,” Jacques explained.

“It isn’t necessary,” James answered.

“It would be my pleasure,” Jacques stuttered, looking at the name tag on James’ shirt to try to finish his sentence with what James assumed was his name.

“James,” James replied. “It’s James, and yes, if you insist, I finish at 5.”

“I do,” Jacques smirked, “insist.”

“Okay,” James muttered.

“I’ll be here at five.”

James had nodded and turned back to the market, waving a quick goodbye to Jacques when he did. He was excited to finally have a night out on the town in the big city, even if in the end, it may boil down to a simple thank you.

The rest of the day passed by slower than it ever had for James. His normal tasks, the ones he usually found semi-comfort doing, now felt long and treacherous beyond belief. He watched as the hours ticked by, slowly and without much cause to why that was.

He was glad when his watch finally struck five. James grabbed his things from the back store and made his way outside. It was ten minutes after the hour. He hadn’t wanted to seem too zealous.

To his surprise, Jacques was there, leaning against the stoned wall of _la pharmacie Billon_ across the street. Dark eyes held his regard, almost seeming to bid James to come to his side for the night on some grand adventure. 

“Wondered if you’d really come,” James said, hoping his truthfulness wasn’t too telling on his part.

“Of course,” Jacques averred.

They walked the streets, down one narrow avenue to the next, until they found a bar, _l’homme damné_ , and stepped in. The heaters warmed their flushed skin, and Jacques and James laughed over glass after glass.

Before they knew it, they’d both ran far from tipsiness into the lands of drunkenness. Their words were slurred, and their conversations had become less shallow. It felt good to have someone listen to James, and though he couldn’t be sure of it yet, James assumed this would become a real, lasting friendship.

It was well into the next day before the bar closed, forcing them both to leave the premises, but the night still felt young even if it wasn’t.

“Why do you find yourself in France?” Jacques bit his lips. James wondered if he’d been holding back that same question all night.

“I’m not sure.”

“England bite your tongue?” James pushed Jacques off the curb he was trying to balance himself on.

“Sod off,” James mumbled.

“I’m just saying,” Jacques garbled, a smug look on his face. _His accent seems less apparent now. Wouldn’t it be the opposite?_ James couldn’t help but ponder this time on the oddity that was the man; the peculiar man that had walked into his work and forgotten his trench coat in the middle of winter.

“You?” James asked.

Jacques was now the one to furrow his eyebrows.

“Paris?” James queried, “always been here?”

“Mostly,” Jacques said, tumbling off the curb for the last time. “But my heart isn’t here,” he laughed, almost seeming caught up on the _clichéness_ of his own words.

“Then, where is it?” James demanded. His full attention on Jacques.

“Well, my family,” Jacques stammered, “they come from a lot of money, The Rullières. Think of a small Medici family, reserved and cold. Though I’m sure they’d prefer to use the word private, if they could, as if that would change the truth,” he laughed again, mockingly, but James could hear the hurt in Jacques’ tone.

“I reckon you aren’t close to them.”

“Not in the slightest,” Jacques admitted before imitating his parents to the best of his abilities, “Jacques, one day you will learn the difference between the rich and the wealthy, my son.”

“Absurd,” James chuckled. His brain still fuzzy from the bourbon.

“Indeed,” Jacques agreed, his head titled back in laughter. “But my grandfather had an old villa in _Grasse_ , the South of France. As a boy, my parents would summer us there; my brother and I.”

James imagined Jacques there, basking in the scolding summer sun in the village of _Grasse_ , his ashen skin tanned and his palms, his long throat, and his soles still alabaster where the rays of golden light didn’t manage to reach.

Jacques was the kind of pale that could only come from being north of the equator too long; ancestors and ancestors worth of such northness. _He must not even tan, actually. He must only burn._

“I’d like to believe I’m from there. Far, far from the inlands, in the untravelled hinterlands, I suppose.”

“It sounds beautiful.”

“It was,” Jacques said. “It is. There was a beach I used to go to a lot. I miss it. So many great memories there.”

Again, James could picture it. Jacques lounged out in a bathing suit, writing the terrible poetry he loved liked he’d mentioned earlier to James at the bar. Or maybe, he’d be writing another cadenza to Bach or Bocelli with the violin his parents had forced him to play all of his youth, potentially even a Rullière composition with how wealthy Jacques’ family seemed to be.

James couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t think he wanted to be. The image alone was perfect enough; Jacques in _Grasse_.

“It’s six o’clock,” Jacques stated.

“Ante meridiem.”

“What?”

“It’s a.m.,” James clarified.

“I’m Latin, and I didn’t even know that. How do you?”

“Must be some classic I read,” James sniggered, poking fun at Jacques, “I work at 7, in an hour.”

“Wait, you do?”

“Yes,” James said.

“You’ve not gotten a blink of sleep, though? We’ve been out all night.”

James shrugged. He didn’t mind. Tonight had been worth every second. They walked back down the same paths they had many hours ago, Jacques still a little bit inebriated, and to the outside of James’ work; _le marché amicale_.

He was definitely going to be hungover all day even if he’d stopped drinking around three. James sighed.

“Are you available Monday?” Jacques asked. James thought, a slight blush seared at his cheeks, but he tried to mask it. _Monday is two days away._

“Yes, what time?”

“Nine? Let’s make it coffee this time. I think we’ve got enough alcohol in us to last the week,” Jacques simpered.

“Sure,” James said, accurately hiding the smile that wanted to morph his face into a huge, big grin.

“Back to the drudgery of the market for now then, Potter?”

“Sadly,” James laughed, and then, he was on his way to work, the night with Jacques still clear in his memory.

The days from then on out seemed to pass by quicker. James had loved their winter torpor and their ever-blossoming friendship. It made life worthwhile.

Soon, the days became weeks, and the weeks became years, and suddnely, they’d been friends for over a decade with a coffee shop they’d opened together with the help of Jacques’ money.

And James, who once knew nothing of memories, had more than he could have ever asked for.


	5. Hey

Nobody is telling me what they think of this story. I only have 2 friends who commented, and I'm feeling really insecure. 

I need to know what ppl think. If not, I may just give up on this altogether...

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and reviews are love, please take the time to let me know what you think xx
> 
> Ive not received any comments apart from friends on this story so far. I'd really like to know what anybody thinks of this story. I'm really not sure how to feel about it.


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